2003 has seen Symbian lay strong foundations for the creation of a mass market for the smartphone in 2004 and beyond. There has been a healthy growth in the number of device shipments, a steady stream of new phone announcements and increased interest from the broader mobile developer community in creating applications for Symbian OS. Picking out the most significant products for the year is no easy task as there are many players in the Symbian ecosystem that deserve recognition, but after much deliberation here is our pick of the year's best.

Most innovative application

There have been many good applications released this year, both original works for Symbian OS as well as ports of a number of popular Palm and Pocket PC applications. As applications have ranged from games through personal information management to business and security applications, finding the most innovative is somewhat daunting, however, for us DreamScribe from DreamSpring software get the accolade this year.

DreamScribe provides a method for creating PIM records, contacts, tasks, calendar items, using the joystick to select most of the features of the record and minimizes the need to enter text. DreamScribe cleverly builds on the key features of the Series 60 interface, the PIM application and joystick, in a way that integrates them in a powerful and easy to use manner.

Most innovative Device

We have restricted ourselves to those phones which actually made it to market in 2003, and our top choice is the Siemens SX1, not so much for the sheer technology, after all the Nokia 6600 has a more advanced version of the Series 60 platform and similar specifications. Rather the SX1 is our choice because the physical design of the phone has thought through the paradigm shift that a rich user interface on a small device creates. The SX1 focuses its design around the joystick (do you note a theme here?) as the key interaction component in Series 60. By moving the number keys to the side of the screen the SX1 also creates a number of new control options for application shortcuts and game control which should offer developers new and exciting possibilities.

Most innovative Development tool

Although Borland's C++BuilderX and the Open Source OPL were significant news items during the year it is AppForge's MobileVB which takes our accolade for most innovative development tool.

MobileVB uses the capabilities of Microsoft's Visual Basic to create controls which a developer can use to build applications which closely mimic the native interfaces of a range of mobile platforms including Palm, Pocket PC, Series 60, Series 80 and UIQ. MobileVB not only provides a cross platform development tool but the accessibility of Visual Basic to a broader community of developers means it also brings mobile development to a wider audience, including those developers with domain expertise but minimal programming experience.

AppForge are also promising to deliver Crossfire in early 2004 an updated version of MobileVB which supports Visual Basic .NET, and provides the ability to deploy applications which utilize Microsoft's .NET framework. This will open up the option for using Symbian based devices in environments which otherwise could have been a monopoly for Microsoft.

Most Innovative Market Initiative

One of the problems with Series 60 is that it is so phone like that many users do not fully appreciate that they can install sophisticated application on their phone. This is a significant challenge to Nokia as Series 60 appears to lag behind UIQ in its ability to add after market applications. In many ways this is because Series 60 phones appeal to buyers who are not as confident with technology as the typical tech savvy UIQ buyer. While this is a testament to the design of Series 60 it does not help build a third party developer community.

Enter Nokia's Try and Buy program that is now running with the Nokia 6600 and Nokia 3660 phones. It is the most serious effort to date to educate the broader consumer community about the abilities of their phones. Try and Buy delivers a selection of applications on the phones MMC card which the owner can try three times. After their three tries the user can buy a key to permanently unlock the application if they want to keep it.

What makes Try and Buy clever is that the keys to unlock the applications can be purchased through the same retail channel that the owner used to buy the phone. Rights Management software also means that any key in the retail channel can be used to unlock any application on any Try and Buy phone, keeping it simple for the retailer. This makes the program very accessible and breaks down the technology barriers which may have been an impediment to software sales amongst a significant portion of Series 60 owners.

So what About 2004?

What does 2004 hold in store for Symbian? Firstly we know there will be new devices, Symbian have indicated that in total there are currently 31 phones and variants under development by 9 licensees. The Sendo X, BenQ P30 and Nokia 7700 have already been announced and while it is likely that the lion's share of devices will emanate from Nokia we can expect to also see new phones from Fujitsu, Panasonic, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Add to this the fact that LG has indicated that they will also be using Symbian OS in a range of phones, and that speculation continues that several other far eastern device manufacturers are likely to sign up for Symbian 2004 won't be short of hardware news. Also look out for new licensees in niche areas such as GPS.

On the applications front we expect 2004 will see some significant changes. As we noted earlier 2003 has seen an increasing number of mobile developers, mainly Palm developers, start to bring their applications to Symbian OS. We expect this trend to continue and strengthen in 2004 with an increasing number of Windows developers, including ones which have not traditionally worked across multiple platforms, starting to port their applications to Symbian OS. This will bring significant competition for the established Symbian OS developers, but ultimately benefit Symbian smartphone owners with a wider range of software.

2004 will also see the first real inroads for Symbian into the enterprise. We expect to see the partnerships with the likes of IBM and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young bare fruit. Symbian themselves are also likely to get a lot more active in this area as, unlike the consumer market where the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson have a direct relationship with the consumer, the enterprise will be in many ways more focused on buying into the operating system and Symbian clearly has a role there. We are also expecting some significant announcements from the major players in this area during 2004.

For developers we are expecting a steady growth in the tools available for native C++ development during 2004, nothing revolutionary but a progressive enabling of existing tools for Symbian development over the entire development lifecycle from analysis through design and coding to testing.

In the market the two significant growth areas will be mobile gaming and mobile media, with greater emphasis on those products and services which drive data traffic. Location based service will also show significant growth with a number of devices following in the steps of the Motorola A920 and adding location APIs. Services will lag somewhat and we don't expect to see much of significance until the second half of the year, but we strongly expect that by this time next year you won't be able to get away from the hype.

Overall we expect 2004 to be an interesting year not only for Symbian but the smartphone market in general. 2004 is likely to see sales of smartphones truly broadening into the mass market and taking computing to a new audience. This is likely to create opportunities which we can not foresee, but rest assured that during 2004 SymbianOne will keep you up to date with the changing Symbian ecosystem and provide you with the information you need as a user or developer to make the most of the opportunities it presents.

Do you agree with our picks and predictions? Let us know what you think was the best of 2003 and what 2004 has in store.